There are two ways you get a gaming PC. You either shop for all its components and build it yourself, or buy one pre-buit from a company in the business of selling them. Alienware is one such company. One of the differences between the two modes of getting a gaming PC is that if you find that a component is faulty, within a period, you could return the faulty part to the retailer for a replacement. With pre-built PCs, the whole unit has to be sent to a service center, for them to diagnose the fault and replace parts.

Diamond Multimedia, popular for its ATI graphics accelerators have allegedly pumped anywhere between 15,000 and 20,000 defective graphics cards using the Radeon HD 3800 series SKUs between the months of January and July, 2008, through OEM channels. As as a report from TG Daily finds out, it may be more of a case specific to Diamond and its manufacturing sources, particularly Info-Tek Corporation (ITC). Alienware has alleged that a disturbingly high amount of graphics card related failures have been noticed with its products. The system builder found failure rates of more than 10% with HD 3870 X2 cards, more than 2% with 3870 models and almost 8% for 3850 versions. Problems included random crashes and artifacts. These problems may have been caused because of the cards lacking power-management features (for the HD 3850), resistors with wrong values (for HD 3870). The source of the problems may have been traced to ITC, one of the manufacturers that has contracts with Diamond. Diamond itself is also to blame, since clearly its product testing, quality assurance teams have been sleeping on the job. This just might cost Diamond its supply contract with Alienware.

ummmm 2% of 3870's ? that's well within normal fail rates, 8% and 10% area little high, but not exactly astounding failure numbers. But seriously it sounds like it could just have easily been alienware shipping rigs with underpowered psu's causing the issues. But hey in the PC business passing the buck isn't just a practice, it's a lifestyle.

I remember the only Diamond card I ever purchased was a 3dfx banshee when they first came out and had to wait 3 weeks for a driver update to use it the drivers that came with it would not even load and I havent purchased anything made by them sense that time because of this.

Damn, both of my 3870x2s are diamond. I hope they don't give out soon or I'm going to have some pissed off kids on my hands. I'm glad I laid off of diamond by accident with the 4800s. I basically took the cheapest I could find with them & they're all purring (or roaring) like kittens (or big things that roar)

well, after skimming through the article - it wouldn't surpise me if the issue really revolves around defunct PSUs bieng used by Alienware. I think we can all agree that in 90% of OEM rigs, they tend to opt for the el-cheapo, generic, WTF is that?!, PSU. Even still, when they do make use of a quality name (i.e. Antec), the unit typically meets, what we would consider, bare-minimum requirements for the system it's powering.

IMO, I don't find Diamond at any fault here, it seems like it's either related to generic PSUs - or the possiblity that manufacturing was cutting some corners. It's quite possible DM's quality assurance team completely missed any issues when looking at the rather low failure rates - and 15,000 units within a 4-5 month window, when 15 million units have been sold since last November, offers what would only be a low catch rate. They might've run across a small handful of defective units, but probably not enough to catch their attention.

As far as ATI brands are concerned - I hold Diamond and VisionTek to be on par for the same level of quality and dependability. Read the article - if you possibly have a defective card, contact Diamond and they'll handle it.